This course is highly suitable for students (at any level) in engineering, natural sciences and culture of the techno-scientific world.
This course introduces students to contemporary research on gender, technology and automobility. Students will learn to contextualize and historicize technology. In addition, the course prepares students for interdisciplinary collaborations. By becoming facile with cultural and social studies of automobility, the students deepen their understanding of the interdependence of technology, gender and additional categories of social inequality. In addition to skills in debating and assertiveness, the course improves the students' reading, presentation and communication skills.
The car is more than a mode of transportation, that moves people from A to B. Due to its plasticity, it serves as a mobile living room or office, toy and leisure appliance. The car is a material representation of culture. It is a symbol of Modernism and signifies freedom, autonomy, independence and consumerism. Concurrently, it is classified as a global epidemic (WHO 2013), with the symptoms accidents, noise, congestions, and excessive use of environmental resources. The car serves as an individual enhancement of power and as an extension of the driving self. Therefore, it is a medium to communicate lifestyles and identities. Hence, it is no surprise that individual driving competence is linked to persistent gender stereotypes and the car itself serves as a resource for gender performances. More than almost any other technology of the 20th century, the car is entangled with diverse living worlds.